‘Berg Hosts Lecture On Parents In The Workplace
On March 22, Muhlenberg College will host "Parents in the Workplace: Issues and Answers, " the seventh annual Danielle Dionne Guerin Memorial Lecture in Women's Studies.Thursday, March 15, 2007 01:59 PM
The event, held in the Great Room of Seegers Union at 7:30 p.m., is free and open to the public. A reception will follow the event.
Speakers for the lecture are lawyer Mara Weissman and activist Kiki Peppard.
Weissman, a 1982 graduate of Muhlenberg College and a 1987 graduate of Fordham Law School, is also founder and president of Second Shift, an organization for career women that boasts over 350 members. Its mission is to provide a forum for career women who devote themselves to their professions and the care of their children and families. The forum provides a resource or networking, education, socializing and sharing ideas and strategies toward finding and maintaining a balance between family and work obligations. Guest speakers and events have included First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, a family communications specialist, medical and financial planning, fitness, technology and stress, a sex therapist, celebrity authors and publishing and television journalists.
Kiki Peppard has fought to end discrimination against single mothers in the workplace and prohibit employers from inquiring abut an applicant’s marital and parental status – a practice referred to as “maternal profiling,” that is only illegal in 22 states. Peppard has spent six years trying to get Pennsylvania legislators to sponsor a bill against maternal profiling in interviews and the next six trying to get the bill passed into law. (The bill was brought up and failed in December 2006.) After years of going relatively unnoticed by the media, Peppard and her cause have been bolstered after being featured by the website www.MomsRising.org, as well as articles in the New York Times, on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered and websites www.womensenews.org and www.dailykos.com.
